Part 2: Pluto

Simon wakes up from a flashback to find that he's very far from home...

I am back on the boat again, but it's louder then I remember. A gutteral roar is coming from somewhere - the engine is struggling or something. Maybe that is how it goes wrong.

I am on the deck of the cruise liner, and I am drinking a cocktail. A strawberry bomb or something, I'm not really paying attention. I'm looking out over metal railing on a black sea which reflects none of the stars above and all the lights that shoot off this never sleeping holiday ship. Usually that stuff doesn't piss me off but at this particular moment it does.
Stop moping Si, lets go play pool!
Without looking up I mutter something that blurs. Half of me says I'm just drunk, and a lightweight drunk at that.
The other half says this is all a dream, and it doesn't matter.
I mutter something like someone else is already on the table Tom. Leave it.
No! He says.
He walks up to me and grabs me by the shoulders, spins me. I remember him squeezing my shoulder blades hard with his guitar hardened fingers.
Get your act together Tom says. It's your birthday!
True...I say after a moments pause.
After another moments pause I turn back around and cling to the railing.

This was not the birthday I wanted.
Come to think of it, this wasn't the life I wanted. At all.
Maybe Tom, my best friend, senses this.
A few seconds later his shapeless dream face is next to mine, looking over the ocean.
...What's wrong?
Tom, if one thing was wrong then I wouldn't be out here. Everything's fu-...freaking wrong...
The music grows louder. I don't remember the song. Maybe a love song? A depressing one, probably.
You can say the f word if you like Si...
Mum told me not to use it...
My mum is dead.
Right...
Tom has been stunned into silence. I guess thats something.
Somewhere behind us, Matt is patrolling the ship pariah-like. Making sure I am not getting into trouble. Matt is my keeper. I'm his pet budgie, with a nice little cage.
Cheer up Si...
Tom is right. Although it takes me a while to get it into my head.
My parents died a year ago. They have moved on without me. So I was going to do the same.
I haven't managed it, even now. But the thought of being hammered is enough to convince me that pool and drinking free cocktails is a good idea.

Lets go...
Tom jumps in a little circle. I hear the roar growing louder and louder - it's nearly time.
There's the Si box I know!
He picks me up in a bear hug.
The ship shakes. Like it's hit something very very hard.
I hit the rail. Tom lets go - he has hit his fingers on the railing.
I flail for the railing and miss.
I plunge downward.
Tom's muffled screams follow me as I hit the water. Somehow that keeps me awake - his screams of agony are enough to make me realise that Im dead, absolutely dead, if I don't stay awake...
As swiftly as I am under the water, I am above it again. I am treading water for dear dear life. 
SIMON...

The boat is pulling away. I can feel the cold of the water soaking into my fattening clothes. Which would pull me toward hell. I begin to sink under the waves.
The first thing I think is the hope that Tom says I was being stupid. Not him.
The next thing I hope is that the cruisers propellers finish me off before the water chokes me. My head begins to sink beneath the water - I am doomed.
A life ring hit's my hand and I grab it. I jam it over my head, then under my arms.
The muffled screams are drowned out by the water in my ears. I cling on to my life ring, clenching my eyes shut as the roaring gets louder and louder, and the boat gets further and further away...
Why doesn't the boat stop?

---

Why didn't the boat stop...what..?
The roaring is loud. So loud that I can't sleep through it any longer. And I am a heavy sleeper.
I open my eyes to find myself in pitch darkness. I can feel under my head a spring mattress - my back hurts from lying awkwardly, on my side against a vibrating wall. Under my fingers, it has the feeling of rust. My fingers flinch away almost instantly. I hate rust.
It's only then I feel the stinging again, and groan. It's duller though...feeling my palms with inspecting fingers, I find bandages. I can smell septic.

'Hello?' I mutter, only for my parched voice to be silenced by the roaring mechanics.
The whole room judders as the roaring stops with a shuddering cough. I am thrown off the mattress. I hit the ground hard. My cry of pain and surprise is high pitched. Whimpish, I think as I try to struggle back onto a frail feeling mattress.

Another crash of a bang. Light fills the room, exposes the brown rusty wall. Shows me the Mattress.
Part of the covering has been stripped away, leaving metal spring's harshly exposed beneath. Colourful crimson red is splattered across some more of the mattress, along with a harsh brown.
I flinch away.

'Hey, HEY! Calm down...lie over here...'
I find arms hooking under my armpits. Almost throwing me a few feet. I expect hard floor to be beneath me - instead it's another mattress, away in the shadow.
I hit that mattress and curl up, closing my eyes.
'I...I need water...' I cough.
What feels like a plastic bottle is shoved into my hands.
'Drink.' The soft, yet sharp girls voice orders.
I try and pour the water down my throat sideways, only for it to spill across the mattress. I sit up only to hit my head against the wall. I am so...so dizzy...
As if I had asked for the help without talking, a hand finds it's way around the back of my neck. Another takes the bottle and presses it to my disorietated mouth.

'Open.'
I stretch my jaw. I only just realize it hurts to do so - In fact all my joints are aching. My muscles feel like they have black death.
Then the water pours into my mouth. Soaks my crusty tongue, and my plastic dry gums. Then I gulp and the water flushes down to my insides. A heavenly coolness spreads through me, and like a coffee addict I gulp more, and more, and more, and more, and more-
The water's gone. The bottle's empty.
S**t.
'You hit the water hard back in that lake...' The girl says. 'Surprised you're even ship shape. Where did you come from?'
'I...'
For some reason, I am keeping my eyes clenched firmly shut. Maybe because, after having seen the blood stain on the other mattress, I didn't want to see anymore of it. If I wanted to see a world of wreckage and murderers after all, I could have just killed myself and gone to hell.

'I...life ring...' Is all I mutter.
She aaaaaah's. She sound's strangely sympathetic, for a girl who is keeping me in a cramped, bloody hole.
She starts saying something else, something about sleep and soon and gameplan, and I suddenly blurt-
'Please get me a phone.'
She doesn't reply for a moment. I can hear my own ragged breathing - my mouth is drying again, my tongue the same...
Then-
'Pluto doesn't have phones baby. You are home.'
She says it softly, as if she's trying to blunten the tips of the knives driving into me.
My mouth widens slightly, although no breath comes out. My eyes open slightly. My eyes meet hers.
Her greens were probably cute once.
They would be the eyes of the girl who was popular and nice to everyone. She never said a bad word about anyone. She probably still hugged teddy bears. Everyone thought she was the pure one.
Yet now those eyes have developed a sheen a grim realism. Years pass, and a cruel world has just sat on the cute girl from school. She is irrevocably changed, and her sympathy is only in passing.
'Get some sleep.' She says.

I close my eyes again. Im not sure if I moan or not, although I think I may have as the light disappeared and the door crashed shut again. I wished for it back as the roar began again. As everything around me began to judder and vibrate, harder then before.
I try to sleep, praying to whoever was up there that this, this darkness hemming me into the corner of the mattress, was just another dream. Just another nightmare, to compound the nightmares. The wreckage, the burnt out plane, the life ring, my parched mouth, the sharks...that has to be all a dream.
Has to be. 
I don't dream as I close my eyes. My sleep is shutting my eyes and hoping the time passes quicker. It half works - up to the point my back begins to ache from the crappy mattress, and my hand involuntarily scratched the rust in my attempting to sleep.

What comes is worse. Much worse.